


anything but fair

by Lilaciliraya



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Dexter (TV)
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Character Death, Crossover, Episode: s01e06 L.D.S.K., Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Episode: s05e12 The Uncanny Valley, Gen, Mercy Killing, Serial Killers, Spencer Reid as Unsub, bc dex, go crossovers, i guess, reid's dad takes him when he leaves, thats how he gets to florida, whooP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:04:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilaciliraya/pseuds/Lilaciliraya
Summary: And Spencer...Spencer would be a mercy killer.





	anything but fair

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by The_Bookkeeper's "breathing's just a rhythm"...  
> specifically: "It's a thin, thin line between profiler and unsub, and Spencer fits too many profiles for comfort. But it wouldn't be vengeance. Hotch and Morgan, they don't understand. Carl Buford and George Foyet are not the controlling factors, not the independent variables. It wasn't Diane Turner or Tobias Hankel or Jason Gideon or Harper Hillman or even William Reid who hurt Spencer. It was all of them, and everyone who hurt them, and every indifferent line of genetic code which robbed his mother of her mind, and every random twist of fate which set all of them on their paths.
> 
> There's no escaping it. Not in this world. No saving the children.
> 
> Unless . . .
> 
> ("He was being kind.")
> 
> Spencer would be a mercy killer."
> 
> it's brilliant and you should read it if you haven't!

 

“We’re leaving, Spencer,” he hears, and there is a heavy hand over his shoulder, pulling, pulling. 

 

“But-” there is a sharp tug on his arm and he struggles to keep his balance as he is yanked into his father’s car, all of his belongings left inside his room.

 

“We’re leaving.”

 

And that’s that.

 

\--

 

His father doesn’t stop driving for hours. He isn’t sure exactly where they are- he’d fallen asleep somewhere in the middle- until they pass a sign that says ‘Welcome to Florida’. 

 

He gasps at that, and his father’s head jerks up to glare at him in the rearview mirror. That’s the last time he remembers his father ever bothering to look at him at all.

 

Welcome to Florida.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t have many friends growing up.

 

Well, that’s not quite true. He doesn’t have any at all, unless he counts the librarian but even then it’s only Thursdays, and he doesn’t think that’s really the same thing, anyway.

 

He doesn’t really mind that much, but he wishes the other kids would leave him alone. The only real problem, besides the bullying, is that public schools have a lot of places that require people to group up, like the lunch room. There isn’t space for him to sit alone and take up a whole table just for himself.

 

He knows that he shouldn’t skip any more meals, so he has to brave the cafeteria. He sees a boy in the corner sitting alone at a table and thinks maybe it’ll be okay if he sits there alone, too. 

 

He stays a few seats away, of course.

 

\--

 

Spencer has never talked to Dexter but he’s the best friend he has ever had. He doesn’t mind at all that Spencer sits by him and he never makes fun of him or beats him up or anything. 

 

He’s never talked to Dexter, but he knows there’s something off about him. 

 

Dexter tries, he can tell that he puts up a good show, but Spencer has nothing better to do but watch. He’s spent plenty of time practicing, watching his father’s body language for the slightest sign of insincerity, for the subtlest of warnings to  _ stay away _ , so he sees it. 

 

 

But-

 

Dexter is the best friend Spencer has ever had.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t think Dexter is damaged. He’s just… empty.

 

\--

 

He ends up in the FBI, which would be surprising but really isn’t. Last he heard from Dexter, he was with law enforcement as well. They go their separate ways; it was only ever really a friendship of convenience. 

 

He doesn’t forget, though. Working with the BAU, he sees his friend everywhere, in all of the small things. He’d even dare to say that it helps, some.

 

His only problem with the job is that he can’t understand it. He gets how to track down the unsubs, how to piece together motives, how to map out geographic profiles. He understands, intimately, how circumstance can mold a man and wring a soul dry. 

 

What he doesn’t understand is how people can stand idly by and watch it happen, how they can look into the eyes of an innocent human being under pressure and turn their back as they grow hard beneath the weight. He doesn’t understand how a person can tear into someone’s chest and rip the pulsing organ found there out with their bare hands before asking them, blood still warm and trailing down their forearms, how they could be so cold. 

 

He doesn’t get how they can look back and act surprised.

 

He knows that killing is a choice. 

 

He doesn’t know how people can believe they play no part in others making it.

 

\--

 

He meets Tobias. Then he meets Charles, and then Raphael. 

 

He hates two of them, wishes desperately that he could have saved the last. It’s too late, though, and the end is approaching. He isn’t sure yet whose end it will be, but it’s speeding towards them either way.

 

And-

 

He takes the gun and pulls the trigger and the bullet flies and he stares Tobias Hankel straight in the eyes, a feat he’s never quite managed before, and he watches.

 

He sees how the tension fades and his eyes shine with hope, finally, he sees how the life leaves his body and takes all of the suffering with it.

 

“You think I’ll get to see my mom again?”

 

He’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry-

 

He killed a man and he feels empty like the way Tobias’s eyes are staring straight ahead, unfocused. He’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry-

 

He’s not.

 

Is he?

 

Maybe he’s just sorry that he isn’t feeling sorry like he should.

 

\--

 

_ I know I should feel bad about what happened. I mean, I killed a man, you know, I should feel something… but I don’t. _

 

_ Not knowing what you feel- that’s not the same as not feeling anything. _

 

Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.

 

He doesn’t feel anything when they die, when he kills them.

 

\--

 

He sits at Dexter’s table for almost a full year before the older kids bother him there. He’s been waiting for them to start up again; he thinks that they only stopped because they’re scared of Dexter, a little. Not because they can see what’s underneath- Spencer thinks he’s the only one that’s noticed that, still- but because Dexter’s actually kind of popular. Everybody likes him even though he doesn’t hang out with them all the time. He’s always nice.

 

James is the one who starts it- James with his whole gang of boys behind him- but Dexter shuts them down in less than a minute. They actually walk away, too. Spencer is in awe. 

 

Of course, James catches up to him after school and gives him a glaring black eye anyway, but that happens too often to be memorable. What he’ll never forget about it is that when Dexter catches sight of his face and sees the bruise, his face hardens and he looks- not empty, but angry. Spencer follows him as he turns and walks away.

 

He sees him pull the knife from thin air and rest it in the palm of his hand, tucked up along his wrist while he marches after James Thompson, eyes blazing. He sees an older man run up and pull Dexter away before he reaches the other boy. His heart is beating so fast he tries to hold his breath just to hear their conversation over it’s pounding, but it’s too loud. He gives up and runs all the way home.

 

His heart doesn’t slow for hours. It feels so warm and full and- and happy.

 

Three days later, James Thompson goes missing.

 

Spencer is only 11 years old and he is pretty sure that he’s the reason somebody is dead.

 

\--

 

He hugs Hotch, talks to Gideon, stares longingly at the pockets of a dead man in a graveyard. 

 

_ Can I just have a second alone? _

 

He walks back to Tobias’s body and waits for the pain, for his heart to drop, for the tightness in his chest. It doesn’t come. He looks at the slack face in front of him and compares it to the pinched eyes he’d come to know over the last 48 hours. 

 

Oh-

 

He thinks-

 

Oh.

 

He’s glad that at least one of them will be reunited with their mother. 

 

He leaves the vials. 

 

\--

 

Within a week after Tobias he finds out about a huge case in Miami, a killer that has already been dubbed ‘The Bay Harbor Butcher’. Agent Lundy’s team was called in.

 

He wonders if-

 

He pulls up the files and looks them over. He recognizes the profile he finds in each word, each photo. 

 

He makes the call by that same evening. 

 

\--

 

James Thompson.

 

Phillip Dowd.

 

Tobias Hankel.

 

\--

 

“Hey Spencer,” the man greets him with a stiff nod and a (predatory) half-smile. He’s gotten better at his performance, Spencer notes, but the smile has always been the hardest lesson for him to master.

 

“Uh, hello, Dexter, thanks for, uh,” he starts, but he’s never been good with this sort of thing. They’d always worked best as a trio: Spencer and Dexter and silence. He tries, anyway, “I wanted to talk to you about- I wanted to talk.”

 

Dexter just raises an eyebrow, his signature motion, and Spencer clears his throat to add, “It’d be best if we went somewhere a little more private.”

 

He doesn’t seem to have a problem with following him, a virtual stranger these days, to an apartment building. Spencer quirks his own lips up at that, amused by the thought of Dexter being hunted instead of doing the hunting. No, he decides, Dexter has no need to worry.

 

Spencer jumps right into it. “I want to work with you.”

 

\--

 

The team gets called down to Atlantic City for victims made living dolls. Spencer, having been involved in the other side of these processes for a few years now, is able to piece it all together quickly, covering up each lead behind himself as he goes. It’s a bad case, so he doesn’t work with the team- he calls Dexter. 

 

Dexter kills the father for the crimes he has committed. 

 

Spencer kills his daughter with her dolls in her hands; he does it quick and painless, takes her away from it all, saves her. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do, and he sees now that this is the only way. He hopes she found one last moment of happiness before she went. 

 

They clean up after themselves. Thoroughly. 

 

The team has nothing to work with, and once the bodies stop appearing, evidence does as well. With no new leads and nothing to work off of, they leave- yet another bad case to haunt their sleep. 

 

\--

 

They fit: Spencer and Dexter and silence.

 

One day the silence gets to be too much, and Spencer cannot stand the way that it echos inside of his head . He can’t stand all of the tortured eyes that shine with tears in that same empty silence, all alone because they’ve never known anything better. He doesn’t know how to live with it any longer. It’s time. 

 

He calls Dexter, says, “I’m a criminal. I’ve killed people, you know,  _ innocent _ people. They were always innocent.”

 

“I know,” is his reply.

 

And Dexter adds another slide to his collection.

 

\--


End file.
